


DW Meta

by mitzirocker



Category: Doctor Who
Genre: Gen, random meta from tumblr
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-12
Updated: 2019-01-10
Packaged: 2019-09-17 04:22:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 2,219
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16967586
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mitzirocker/pseuds/mitzirocker
Summary: Assorted meta rescued from the sinking ship that is Tumblr.





	1. Big Dinners

In 1969, at the end of _The War Games_ , we saw the Time Lords for the first time. They soared out of the sky, defeating a villain the Doctor had been desperately fighting for the best part of nine episodes in seconds, and reset the plot of the show in twenty-five minutes. In this episode, the mystique of the Time Lords was fully established; obscenely powerful beings that would toy with the lives of galaxies to keep the timelines running smoothly.

In 1975, _The Deadly Assassin_ aired. At the time, it had the fandom up in arms, and it’s not hard to see why. It presented the mystique as just a projection, hiding a decadent, indolent society of ineffective pen-pushers. The CIA and the renegade Time Lords were perhaps the only ones who did anything to protect the universe at large. Subsequent episodes showed us the Black and White Guardians, the closest the series has ever come to gods - but they were written with the intention of possibly being ‘ascended’ Time Lords. The mystique wasn’t fully torn to the ground, stamped on and thrown into a river until _Enlightenment_ , in the Fifth Doctor’s era, where we meet the Eternals, who seem more interested in fucking around than taking over the universe. It’s mentioned, quite casually, that they see the Time Lords as yet more 'Ephemerals’, and the mystique is torn apart forever.

The Time Lords remind me of quite a few things, but the big one is Unseen University. UU is a university of magic in Terry Pratchett's _Discworld_. It has a reputation for being a shining school of magic, a place where this noble art can be refined and reimagined, a - if you know anything about the Time Lords, you can probably fill in the rest yourself. Also like the Time Lords, in reality UU is full of fat old men, getting into stupid arguments and procrastinating. UU even has the obscenely convoluted bureaucracy!

Then, one day, I was reading _Turtle Recall_ , the official Discworld companion. There was a line that I read, and I thought, 'huh, interesting’. Then I made the connection to the Time Lords, and I thought 'WHAT THE FUCK THIS EXPLAINS EVERYTHING’.

The line was, ’[UU is] a perfect way to ensure that the most potentially dangerous men on the Disc spend their time squabbling amongst themselves and, of course, eating big dinners.’

Because wizardry on the Disc is far from toothless. At the beginning, it devastated the world, leaving scars on the landscape that still affect it during the series. The Time Lords are implied to have fangs - all bullshit aside, _they keep a black hole on their planet and use it to fuel their spaceships_. They could probably rip apart the universe if they wanted to.

What if, sometime in the unmarked, unrecorded, unchanging days between the death of Rassilon and the birth of the one-who-would-become-the-Doctor, someone realised that? What if they changed Time Lord society so that it became a labyrinth of Mobius-looping bureaucrats and stylised propaganda, one that could never rule the universe? What if they erased themself from history so that the straightjacket would become complete, saving everyone from a race of brutal tyrants?

What if, at the dawn of the Last Great Time War, someone realised that the Time Lords couldn’t fight the Daleks as they were? What if Romana or the Doctor or someone with the best intentions changed this society into one that could and would fight the Daleks?

It’s only a few steps from there to the once-unknown Time Lords becoming as renowned and feared as the Daleks, and only a few steps from _that_ to the Final Sanction.


	2. Sacrifice

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was thinking about dragons, and maiden sacrifices.

Whoniverse Earth got the good end of the deal, considering. It gets full protection from any alien threat it can’t handle itself until humanity heads to the stars. Billions of people live, love and build in peace, safe in their ignorance of the thin line between them and those that would enslave them. And what do they have to do in exchange?

Once in a while, someone - usually female, usually young - is chosen. Without any warning, without any fuss, the people of this world must hand her over. It’s not a sacrifice, because she isn’t killed.

She might die later. She might be left on some other planet centuries after the deaths of everyone she knows. She might return with a piece of the storm in her heart, forever marking her as different, changing her utterly. But it’s still not technically a sacrifice.

And the entire world is kept safe, say the government to her family. Isn’t that worth it?


	3. Earth

Renegade Time Lords tend to take planets as their own, and rule them as god-emperors or whatever. With Earth, the Doctor does the first thing but not the second. If you ask them why they didn’t, they’ll probably say something about too much paperwork, but really, it’s a whole tangled mess of reasons, most of which stem back to their hatred of the Time Lords.

So they tend to hang around Earth, and a lot of their companions come from Earth, and the other renegades tend to stay away from Earth (and in turn, they stay away from the others’ planets, which _grates_ at them when they see the results of the Rani’s experiments, but if they did anything they would as good as declare open season on humanity.) Sometimes they fiddle around with Earth’s history, but they are always careful to keep the million little threads of causality that lead to two schoolteachers following a strange student home intact. It’s hard sometimes, seeing genocides and plagues that they know they could stop _if they just take control_ \- but then they shake themself, and go off to do something else.

(When the temptation to put these silly humans on the right track gets really bad, they suggest it to their companion - whose initial response is always shock and horror. They never quite look at the Doctor the same way again. It’s painful, seeing the fear mixed within the trust and respect, but this is why they keep taking companions.)

So they keep on with their life, running from this and that, seeing all the universe, but always coming back to Earth. Even when the Time War starts, they keep a special eye out for that little planet, trying to keep the war away from it.

Then the Time War is over and Gallifrey is gone and all the others are gone and great swathes of the universe are gone, and all they have left is their battered old wreck of a TARDIS and a tiny gem of a planet hovering in the void, so small against the out-of-control Sontarans and the rips and tears in the universe and all those monsters the higher species kept in check that are now crawling out of the woodwork.

It’s all they have left, and maybe they get a little overprotective, a little possessive. Because when Harriet Jones destroys the Sycorax, their first instinct is to lash out, tear her down. Earth is just peeping out of its cradle; it does not need an interstellar war! This idiot could get her whole planet destroyed if she stays in charge! When they let her take office they did not think she would do something this stupid!

Anyway. They know humans, they know exactly where to push to bring her whole government crashing down. Earth is once more safe - well, as safe as it ever gets - maybe they should make sure the Sycorax won’t come after Earth? They do that one weekend when Rose is at home - but it still niggles at them. That voice. Before the Time War, it said ’ _why don’t you fiddle here, interfere there, make the Earth a better place for all your companions?_ ’ Now it says ’ _you’re being too controlling, this would terrify Rose, stop interfering before you lose yourself.'_

Somewhere, somehow, something has gone very wrong.

Then they land on Mars, and _finally_ everything makes sense! They can’t see why they didn’t do this before, everyone (except for those poor people who died up there, maybe they can go yell at their past self until they make the right decision) is safe! Everyone is happy! There is so much they can do now, but where’s the best place to start? So much pain in Earth’s past, the best thing to do is go right back to the beginning and -

Adelaide Brook shoots herself, and, inside their head, everyone they have ever taken as companion screams.

They regenerate soon after, and they regenerate again, and now some parasite has laid an egg in Earth’s moon. If it bursts out, it might kill everyone on the planet, but it might not. They begin weighing up options, and the woman who reminds them so much of Adelaide looks at them, and they understand.

They can’t protect humanity forever. Someday the humans will leave their little world behind and spread across the stars. They justified choosing for humanity before because the humans weren’t advanced enough to understand, but now they are.

And the Doctor doesn’t own this planet. Never has, really. Hard enough keeping one human out of trouble, let alone six billion.

So they step back, and let Clara choose.


	4. Power

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Context: this was written in the aftermath of that one Twelfth Doctor episode where the Doctor refuses to believe an ex-soldier can teach maths. Never mind that one of their best friends was a soldier who taught maths, Moffat thought it would be funny instead of incredibly irritating - anyway.

Things that you learn in early childhood _stick_ , often so far down that you don’t even realise you learned them. When they were a child, the one-who-would-become-the-Doctor learnt that their people were the only real people in the universe, and that every other being was an animal at best. Even after everything they’ve seen, everyone they’ve met, everything that’s happened, somewhere deep down, they still believe it.

There’s a scene in _Genesis of the Daleks_ where Four asks, "Do I have the right?” While this entire episode is perfect, I can’t help but think it’s a bit late to ask that question. Who says they have the right to interfere with a government they dislike, to pick a side in a conflict that doesn’t affect them? They just assumed they did, probably not even consciously. Sometimes that assumption rears its ugly head more obviously, like at the end of _Waters of Mars_ , but mostly it’s just there, in the background, subtly informing everything they do.

And it’s not like they _like_ this. Ever since Barbara Wright verbally bitchslapped them into acknowledging her and Ian as people, they’ve been fighting it. They see their companions as equals, or apprentices at the very least. They believe that every life is important and worth saving. They loudly spurn the trappings of their homeworld and its indolence.

But. They still think, in some dark corner of their mind that they don’t examine that closely, that they are above human laws. And when things go very wrong, when the evils they face go too far, when their companions are threatened that darkness comes out, that blazing world-eating rage that can tear through lives like tissue paper. They become so sharply aware of their power and what they can do, and - when they come back to their senses, this always terrifies them - they use it to rip through those they deem evil, unworthy, beneath them.

So whenever they can, they keep themself in check. They don’t kill when they have a choice. They always take command - after all, _someone_ has to be in charge - but they try to acknowledge the people they’re saving. They listen to their companions. I don’t think the Doctor’s a bad person, but I think they could become a bad person if they ever let themself. The fact that, after everything, they’re still good, makes me admire them all the more.

They don’t think they’re always in charge everywhere. They’re not _stupid_. Even if they are leery about guns, they respect soldiers and don’t look down on them. And they are not a fascist.


	5. The First Doctor was a Lying Liar Who Lied

Ever since Lungbarrow Doctor Who writers have been jumping through hoops so that despite Susan coming from an ex-hive-mind heavily-genetically-engineered asexual botanophobic species that has elaborate biological castes instead of families she can still be the Doctor’s granddaughter.

And I find it kinda funny that everyone worries so much about this, because what if they were just lying?

Because their stay at Totter’s Lane is clearly not the first contact they’ve had with humans, and when humans see two unrelated people living together they automatically assume they’re Doing It, and the renegade wouldn’t care, but the apparent massive age difference means the sexmonkeys start asking questions and poking around and being annoying.

When some official on some world assumes they’re her grandfather, they’re like, ‘Yeah. Sure. Whatever,' and they get bothered by would-be do-gooders much less on that world. 

Hmmmm.

So when Arkytior wants to pretend to be a student in a very early space age society they tell the school office 'YES! I AM HER GRANDFATHER! THERE IS NOTHING UNUSUAL ABOUT OUR RELATIONSHIP! YOU HAVE NO NEED TO INVESTIGATE US!’ They keep up the facade after the kidnapping of destiny to not freak out the panicky primitives, and even then it's only Arkytior who really bothers. 

I imagine she was some young acolyte from their house that they took under their wing, She wasn't the only one. She was just the only one they could save.


End file.
